Too much tea (skeletal fluorosis)

Maneki Neko wrote:But at least the fluor in tea is natural and probably kinda bonded to the other substances in the tea.

That's a very dangerous assumption.

Because of its ionic nature, the fluoride ion is extremely soluble in water.

I haven't found a good explanation for why tea plants absorb fluoride in the first place. Everybody just says that the tea plant "readily absorbs" it from the soil, or "easily bioaccumulates" -- great, that's doesn't help. For example, why doesn't this happen with other plants?

This article makes mention of aluminum-fluoride complexes which can bind up the fluoride. They talk about it in reference to finding better ways to measure the total fluoride content (bound and unbound) in tea. Although it makes me wonder what happens to Al-F complexes in your body (do they stay in tact, or break apart).

Fluoride is great for your teeth, but you have to make sure you rinse the ol' gems well after you brush. I used to enjoy the minty freshness of toothpaste as a kid and swallowed a fair bit.

I've cut my tea consumption considerably over the last few months since I had to fly out of town without tea to sustain me for two weeks. I'm glad, because pesticide and fluoride exposure is something I'm concerned with. I do drink fu zhuan hei cha for it's amazing health benefits, but it is of course known to be high in fluoride, so I don't drink it every day. Fu zhuan makes me incredibly hungry and I just feel better overall. I only drink 5-10g on the days that I do drink it, so I guess it's not too much of a concern.

I am lucky to be privy to a reverse osmosis filter. One of the only effective ways to remove fluoride from your tap water. It's insane our government puts such unnatural chemicals directly into our drinking water. I read some where that many of the fluoride compounds found in our tap water are actually byproducts of chemical plants. They demonstrated this by linking to a news article about a truck that spilled some of the unfortunate chemicals that had originated at a chemical plant and was headed for a water processing facility (it crashed right outside the water facility.) The pure Fluoride salt ate directly through the road chewing through the asphalt and cement.

I'm quite sure what ever is in the tea leaves cannot be the corrosive gunk that is in most of our nations water supply.

5am wrote:I am lucky to be privy to a reverse osmosis filter. One of the only effective ways to remove fluoride from your tap water. It's insane our government puts such unnatural chemicals directly into our drinking water. I read some where that many of the fluoride compounds found in our tap water are actually byproducts of chemical plants. They demonstrated this by linking to a news article about a truck that spilled some of the unfortunate chemicals that had originated at a chemical plant and was headed for a water processing facility (it crashed right outside the water facility.) The pure Fluoride salt ate directly through the road chewing through the asphalt and cement.

I'm quite sure what ever is in the tea leaves cannot be the corrosive gunk that is in most of our nations water supply.

It is all ratio's. The thing is in these water facilities they take a nearly pure flouride solution and pump it into the water in minuscule amounts. I mean tiny tiny tiny amounts. Where as the flouride in the tea leaves is no where close to that concentration, if it were it would behave much the same way.

Stand where you will about adding things to drinking water, but water distributed through municipal water supplies in the United States are held to much higher safety standards than bottled waters, in terms of what can be in it and in what concentration. In my time working for one, we added 3 things to our water, Chlorine ( this is what makes municipal water safe to drink), Flouride ( I think this might actually be government mandated for health reasons, but I did not think to ask the questions while working there on this), and we also added a PH balancer as our region had naturally more acidic ground water than typical. We also had a giant Water softening/ filtration facility that we ran our water through, to in part get rid of some Radon that naturally occurred in our ground water.

If there is one thing I learned while working for that water supply place, it is that when you work in something so federal mandated, you do not just have to deal with the regulators, but there are droves and droves of independent residents that are looking for any possible mis-step to report. This was even in just a small town of less than 50 thousand people, and we had to report to 3 different groups of regulators, and had at least 5 very active people running independent tests on our water, and stopping by ( in the places they could) to see what we were up to on an almost weekly basis.

Floride is added to water to prevent tooth decay. I am from Phillipsburg, New Jersey which did not have floride added to its water. Easton, Pennsylvania (just across the Delaware River did). Children in Phillipsburg had 8 times more cavities than children in Easton.

As Adam said, most bottled water is not as clean as most tap water in the USA. Until the 20th century, a city could not grow large w/o its own source of clean water.

Of course, the pipes of any particular building could ruin good water.

There is some contention as to whether fluoridated water actually helps with tooth decay. Essentially, ingested fluorine doesn't readily get to your teeth, and you have to keep it in your mouth for a considerable length of time for absorption. If your dentist has given you that foam-laden mouthguard to bite down on, that's why it is in there for so long.

Harvard recently put out a paper against the practice, but I think it was unrelated to tooth decay.

I just recently moved from a well water supply to a municipal tap water supply. Unfortunately, tea I brew with tap water come out bitter. Doesn't seem to matter how it's prepared - so long as the tea begins to infuse, it goes south.

Subsequently, I now buy gallon jugs of spring water to brew tea and drink. Not a perfect plan, but one day I'll have a proper filter.

By the way, despite cooking, brushing and rinsing with fluoridated water for over 2 years now (that's the time I've been in Aus) I am getting a root canal done after suffering from bad toothache last week.

Water that contained fluoride naturally was observed to lead to less tooth decay; so, fluoride was added to water to sources lacking it.Coming from a town of cheap, ignorant people, I heard nonsense about communist plots etc. whenever the town considered adding fluoride to its water.Fluoride has been added to water for a long enough time to see what it does. It will not prevent all tooth decay; it will not give everyone high risk of .....I think the Australian phrase "No worries," may apply.

Harvard is not reliable. Not lately, but I have worked there. Most recently the research of the economics professor who made all kinds of predictions about the benefits of austerity policies for European countries was found to have basic mistakes in arithmetic & lots of deception (read "lies") in its premises. Europe may go down the toilet, & it is only a student who exposed him, so don't worry, just think "Harvard".

But that is economics & this is fluoride.... so you are probably right: if one drinks ten cups of tea made w/ fluoridated water for 85 years, he is likely to suffer from....... maybe even die from it...

I'll argue he'll die old & happy.Not really out to argue, just to enjoy tea & learning about it.